US Reserves and National Guard ... J. D. Longstreet

US Reserves and National Guard

They Keep Us Free

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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For a very long time it has bothered me that the Reserve forces and the National Guard in this country, the USA, have been called “Weekend Warriors”.   This term is an insult.  It always has been and … it was intended to be so.

Those weekend warriors make up a HUGE percentage of the fighting forces, on the ground, in combat, in the Middle Eastern theatre.  They are fighting right alongside their brothers and sisters in the uniform of the Regular forces.  They are taking casualties right along side the regular forces.  They are indispensable to our military.  This seems to be understood by everyone but the US Government.

You are aware they do not get the full benefits of the Regular forces… aren’t you?  Well, they don’t.  Surprised?  

It is past time for the Reserve Forces and the National Guard, in the USA, to get full military benefits from the US Government.

The reserve warriors leave their homes, and jobs, to put their lives on the line to defend this country.  They are being shot at, and wounded, as they share the same danger as the Regular troops.  They are, like the regular forces, volunteers. 

The Reserve and National Guard troops train on inferior equipment, Oftimes left overs from past conflicts, which work, sometimes, if they are lucky..  Basically, it is junk. After months, and years, of training to proficiency on this outdated equipment, they are thrust into a war zone, new equipment put in their hands, with a familiarization course, or two, lasting a few hours, and then they are sent into the field. 

But they go.  They go and they fight -- Heroically. 

Many come home with broken bodies just as the regular troops do. 

They deserve to be treated with the same high accolades as the regular forces.  They, too, have paid the price of our freedom.  We cannot honor the men and women of the Reserve forces and the National Guard of the United States enough.  They have defended this country as citizen soldiers since its founding.   Without them, we would not exist as a country today.

So why then are they derided as “Weekend Warriors”?

Let me tell you something about these Weekend Warriors:  These Weekend Warriors have defeated world Super Powers.  They fought one of the greatest armies in the world to a bloody stand still in Korea.  Many units were virtually wiped-out during the early months of the Second World War as communities watched the cream of their young men march away to war… and never return.  They have been there for this country from beforeLexington, right up to, and including, Iraq and Afghanistan.  They’ll be there when the next threat to the freedom of the US raises its ugly head, and they will smash that head quickly and efficiently.

They are our sons and daughters, our fathers, brother, wives, husbands, cousins, etc.   They are us, just as the Regular Forces are us.  So why treat them differently?  Why?

Eventually the wars in the Middle East will end and they’ll come home.  They go back to their jobs, if they are lucky, and then once every other weekend, or so, they will slip into the door of the National Guard armories, or the Reserve Centers, all across the nation, and they will drill.  Then, come summer, they will leave their jobs, and families, for a couple of weeks, and report to a nearby military facility for two weeks of intensive training.  Oftimes these two-week “summer drills” are taken on the vacation time of the Guardsman or Reservists.   Then at some time in the future, the call will come, and they will drop everything, put on their uniform, grab their rifle from the “rifle rack” at the “Armory” or “Center”, and board a very big airplane and be at war again.

Dear Reader, these men, and women, are soldiers in the Grand American Tradition of the “citizen soldier”.  They are to be applauded.  They are to be honored.  They keep us free!

© J. D. Longstreet

Arming Our Enemies ... Alan Caruba

Arming Our Enemies

By Alan Caruba

Why would the Obama administration send twenty F-16

fighter jets to Egypt in the wake of the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak with whom the deal was struck in 2010 and in light of the fact that man now in charge, Mohammed Morsi, is a rabid anti-Semite and enemy of Israel

Wouldn’t a prudent U.S. administration review the earlier deal, part of a $1 billion U.S. foreign aid package, and conclude that a regime now led by a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and man who calls Jews “descendants of apes and pigs” not have its military power increased at a time when much of the Middle East and the Maghreb, northern Africa, is embroiled in turmoil?

Egypt is not threatened by Israel, but it is known that Morsi meets regularly with Mohammed Badi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme leaders, who last year declared that “The jihad for the recovery of Jerusalem is a duty for all Muslims.”

Recently, Dr. Daniel Pipes, the founder and director of the Middle East Forum, editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal, a historian and political commentator, wrote a commentary in which he said, “The persistent belief that training and equipping foreign troops imbues them with American political and ethical values, making them allies of the United States” was “another sign of innocence.” He was being polite. It’s not innocence, it’s stupidity and the U.S. has been repeating it for a long time.

Dr. Pipes cited several cases that are worth recalling.

When U.S. “peacekeeping” troops landed in Lebanon in 1982, “the priority was to train a national army.” Lebanon was in the midst of a civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990. The U.S. effort was a failure that included the 1983 suicide bombing of a Marine Corps barracks that killed 220 Marines and 22 other U.S. servicemen. As Dr. Pipes noted, most of those trained and equipped returned to their communal militias. A renewed effort to repeat this stupidity is underway again! It’s worth noting that Lebanon is governed by members of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization and proxy of Iran.

After more than a decade in Afghanistan, U.S. efforts to train a national police force and military often resulted in attacks by its members on coalition service personnel. In the first eight months of 2012, they killed 45 persons; at which point the training stopped. When the U.S. finally leaves later this year and next, those left behind to continue training programs will be sitting ducks. The billions in military gear will eventually become the property of the Taliban and Afghanistan will return swifty to its seventh century mentality.

As Dr. Pipes noted regarding Mali, U.S. efforts to train “the woebegone Malian national army to take on al Qaeda did not exactly work out.” Der Spiegel, a German daily, reported that “American specialists did train four crack units, totaling 600 men, to fight the terrorists. But it backfired: Three of the elite units have defected en masse to the rebel Tuareg.” One of its commanders, “Captain Amadou Sanogo, trained in the U.S. overthrew the government in Bamako and ousted the elected president.”

Perhaps the most egregious idiocy was the result of the U.S. efforts to mediate the discord between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in which the U.S. “has trained over 6,000 Palestinian Authority security personnel in the hope they will become Israel’s partners for peace.” Neither the PA, nor its competitor, Hamas, has ever acknowledged Israel’s right to exist and Dr. Pipes has predicted that “these militiamen will eventually turn their guns against Israel.” Israel continues to intercept arms intended for Hamas and had to wage a short military operation against Hamas, an Iranian proxy, to deter its daily rocketing of southern Israel. The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, already has plenty of arms provided by the U.S.

Few allies in the Middle East, with the exception of Israelis and the Jordanian monarchy, are reliable. The Gulf States depend on the U.S. for a defense shield against Iran, as does Saudi Arabia. The U.S. has received cooperation from Yemen, but it is folly to think that Egypt or any of the North African states are friendly to our interests.

Sending Egypt F-16s is idiotic. Egypt already has a fleet of more than 200 comparable jets provided courtesy of the American taxpayer. Continuing the practice of arming nations that are unreliable is a very bad, very stupid one.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" and shared on dozens of news and opinion websites. His blog recently passed more than 2 million page views. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. For information on his professional skills, Caruba Editorial Services is the place to go! You can find Alan Caruba on both Facebook and Twitter as well.

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The Plantation ... J. D. Longstreet

The Plantation
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Those who have made a study of American history, especially that portion of history before and during the War Between the States, know it was the democrats who held the black man in slavery in both the Northern states and the Southern states. 

The Democrat Party held the southern states in a fierce grip and continued to do so until a hundred years later when President Richard Nixon successfully broke that grip and began -- what would turn out to be -- a mass migration of southerners from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

Now the Democrats are in the “Big House” in Washington.  The rest of us are “field hands.”  But many of us field hands are writhing under the yoke of the socialist slave masters in Washington and are desperate to break free.

But there are some Americans who find themselves quite happy with the current arrangement between the masters in the Big House and the modern day field hands. 
You see, there really is a sub-class in America.  A class of US citizen, which may be accurately referred to as “wards of the state, or government.”  There have been several generations of these folks and they are joined with the folks in the Big House, today, exactly as the slaves in the days prior to the “War for Southern Independence.”  They depend upon the folks in the Big House for their sustenance, for their very existence.  In many ways, the folks in the Big House own them.
  
In return the “wards” blindly support the Big House folks in anything and everything they try to do.  Their vote and support can always be counted on, IF the folks in the Big House are Democrats. And these days they appear to be Democrats -- although WE know that is only a façade to hide their socialism.

The “wards,” we speak of, are the Americans who will argue you down that Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat!  He had to be!  He freed the slaves, didn’t he?  Actually, Lincoln did not free a single slave.  Read the “Emancipation Proclamation” and you will quickly see that no slaves were freed by it.   In fact, in a letter to Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the US Treasury, dated September 3rd, 1863, Lincoln said the following:  “The Emancipation proclamation has no constitutional or legal justification except as a war measure.”

Lincoln actually proposed three constitutional amendments in his State of the Union Address to Congress in 1862:

1 – Slaves not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation to be freed over a 37-year period, to be completed by January 1st, 1900.

2 – Provided compensation to owners for the loss of their slave property.

3 – The government would transport freed Blacks, at government expense, out of the country and relocate them in Latin America and in Africa.

You see, when Lincoln truly had it in his power to bring real and immediate freedom to approximately 832,000 enslaved people (In the border states that were loyal to Lincoln and the federal government) he, LINCOLN, instead, carefully ensured that they would remain slaves!

But, hey!  Lincoln was a Democrat – right?  Well, YOU try to convince them!

Black Americans are being used and abused by the Democrats just as they were before the War for Southern Independence.  They lie to black people over and over again, and yet -- black Americans continue to blindly support their democratic oppressors. WHY?  Could it be because the federal government feeds, clothes, and houses them?

It is Plantation Politics!  Plantation politics goes back generations in American Democratic Party politics and is a large part of the old “machine politics” of the big urban centers.

Francis Rice, of the National Black Republican Association, in an article entitled: “Obama and Plantation Politics,” says the following: “To his eternal shame, in order to acquire and maintain power, President Barack Obama has adopted the Democratic Party's strategy of keeping blacks poor, angry and voting for Democrats.” (SOURCE).

The Democrats are in charge of the US Government these days (for all intents and purposes) -- just as they were in the South before this nation tore itself apart in the latter part of the 19th century.  As long as they can maintain black Americans in a state of poverty, in a state of anger, and continuing to vote, as a large block, for Democrats/Socialists, Plantation Politics will continue to thrive and reap huge benefits for those in charge -- the Democrats/Socialists.

Democrats/Socialists are occupying the “Big House” these days.  It is they who are practicing modern day Plantation Politics.  But, then again, it has always been the Democrat’s plantation – now hasn’t it?

J. D. Longstreet
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Obama's Speeches Chilling ... J. D. Longstreet

Obama's Speeches Chilling
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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The crowd was roaring.  The lone man, ramrod straight, in his impeccable brown uniform would step forward toward the lectern, then pause and let his eyes wander over the thousands of up turned faces -- all staring at him, waiting for him to speak. And they waited -- and they waited. 

The man at the lectern made no effort to speak.  He just stood there, almost motionless, and didn't say a word.

A wave of anxiety, nervousness, began to sweep through the crowd of expectant listeners. The noise level began to recede.  Soon the roar of the crowd was gone completely.  The crowd became quiet and motionless, a reflection of the man they had come expecting to hear speak.

A full sixty seconds would expire before that man would take the one remaining step to the lectern,  and begin speaking. 

At first he spoke softly forcing his audience to strain to hear his words. Then little by little he would increase the volume of his voice until finally he was shouting and gesticulating in a near maniacal manner.  His audience was worked up to a fever pitch ready and willing to do his bidding, no matter the consequences.

Those of you reading this now, if you are near my age, know exactly of whom I speak -- Adolf Hitler.   He was a master at oratory.  He was a master actor. He was a master at manipulating his fellowman.  He was a master at dealing death and destruction. He was a master at destroying nations and nearly destroyed the world. 

Watching a film clip of one of his speeches today sends chills racing up and down my spine.  It is as though just the sound of his voice invokes evil.

He was, quite likely, the greatest orator of the 20th century.

Here in the 21st century, we have another great orator.  He, too has to power to move his listeners to act while disregarding consequences.  He, too, has worshipers -- some who even refer to him as "Lord and Master."

His Name is Barack Hussein Obama.  And he is President of the United States of America.  And he scares the hell out of me!      

If you look at the faces in one of Hitler's crowds and compare them to the faces in Obama's crowds, you will see the same worship of their speaker.  But look closely.  Look at the eyes.  Do you see it?  Do you see the vacant, "the lights are on, but nobody's home" look reflected in those eyes?  It's the look that makes those tiny little hairs on the back of your neck tingle and stand up.  That's primal fear, honed to perfection by our ancestors while they still lived in caves. 

Trust it. It is telling you:  "Something is dreadfully wrong."

If you could look BEHIND those blank stares, I feel certain to you would see something else, too. Raw fear.  It's the sane part of the human mind fighting to regain control.  Worshipers always fear -- and eventually begin to question.

Given a choice, I will not listen to an Obama speech.   I get the same feeling I would get if told the Battle of Armageddon had begun. Bells and whistles begin going off in the Amygdala of my brain, the part of the brain that controls one's "flight or fight" reaction.  That's our caveman ancestors banging on our door in the middle of the night yelling "FIRE!"

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.  No mere mortal should have that kind of power over his fellow human beings.  It is too easily misused.  It is raw power -- and it is corruptible.

Obama's speeches are chilling to me ... almost malevolent.  It's as though he is using his voice, his tsunami of words, to misdirect the gaze of his worshipers away from all that is not right with America toward a utopian facade of an America that, in reality, does not exist -- and never will.

Encouraging worshipers is never a good idea for mere mortals.  As we said above worshipers will eventually begin to ask questions.  Sooner or later they will ask the right question and receive the true answer.  At which point the "worshipee" is in deep trouble.  That mindless crowd can turn on a dime and produce pitchforks and torches that light the night in hate and violence all directed at the one who deceived them. History is replete with records of just such behavior played out time and again.  The fate of Benito Mussolini springs instantly to mind.

Often less is, indeed, more.  My father was a man of few words.  As a result, when he spoke, the family listened. We knew that even though he did not speak often, when he did -- it was important -- and usually well thought out.  When he had finished, he had finished.  No force on earth could change his mind.  I admired that, growing up as a lad, and I still do.

As I have grown older I have noticed that my world has been slowing down while the world around me has shifted into hyper drive.  The voices I hear from the hyper drive world now are loud, reverberating, penetrating, harsh, crude, insistent, and aggravating. And I am continuing to learn how to shut them out and listen for that "still, small, voice" of authority (1 Kings 19:11-13 -- The Old Testament) asking:  "What are YOU doing here, J. D.?"

It would seem that we have not yet learned that the answer is not carried upon the waves of loud flowery oratory regaling us,  and misdirecting us, with all the right "answers" to all our problems.  Instead, it is within moments of quiet introspection when the still small voice is heard -- just above a whisper -- but with the gravitas of endless universes.

© J. D. Longstreet
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The Making of a Paper Tiger ... J. D. Longstreet

The Making of a Paper Tiger
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
********************Obama is about to "transform" America's military -- and by extension -- America, herself, into a "paper tiger."   The definition of a paper tiger is:  "The nature of a person or organization that appears powerful but is actually powerless and ineffectual."  Remember that. You're going to hear it often in the years ahead as our enemies refer to us in public.

Obama's "sequestration" is going to leave America's throat bare to her enemies.  He is cutting our last line of defense, our nuclear arsenal, by roughly one-third,  all to appease the Russians.  (Mr. Putin's Cheshire Cat grin just got even wider!)

THIS is what happens when an amateur goes up against a pro. 

Obama just had his lunch eaten by Putin.

Obama actually appears AFRAID of Putin!
I have noted many times in this column, how the relationship between America and the Russians swings hot and cold on a regular basis.  Ever since we invited them to leave the North American continent, especially the great northwest of what is now the lower forty-eight states of America, there have been periods when Russia appeared to "love" America and periods when Russia appeared to "hate" America. Like a pendulum, these contrived diplomatic seasons of love and hate could -- and can -- be counted upon to swing regularly.

Until Obama.

Obama is Russia's dream for an American leader.  He stumbles all over himself to be first on his knees before whomever the Russian leader is at the time, offering concessions yet uncalled for by the Russians.  How could it get any better than this from the Russian perspective?

Sequestration, which WAS, indeed, Obama's idea (or at least the idea of someone on his staff, which Obama adopted)  is going to absolutely GUT the US military.  Heck, we may find ourselves leasing another country's military to defend America.  During the decline of Rome, even they had to fill their ranks with barbarian soldiers in an attempt to defend Rome.  As America is tracking Rome's decline to a tee, I see no reason why we won't find ourselves considering the same thing  -- and soon.

OK.  So I'm reaching.  But NOT BY MUCH.

Look, when a single successful EMP missile shot  exploding high in the atmosphere over middle America can shut us down and send us -- instantly -- back into the pre-Civil War period, well, I'd say we are already a paper tiger just waiting for someone to rip our flimsy paper mask off.

Great nations don’t quaver when a threat to their security is made -- by anyone.  If they do, believe me, they will not be a great nation for long.  Once that chink in a nation’s armor is made visible, it is the open door through which all that nation’s enemies will seek entry.

America's current leadership is rightly seen by America's enemies as a gift from whichever god they worship.

Here in America, our weak link, our chink in the national armor, is the political left.  Their quavering has caused more deaths of American civilians, and American servicemen, and servicewomen, than any other single cause.

Look. A country cannot hesitate when confronted with danger. It must reply to that threat immediately and with irresistible force. Half-hearted military forays into to the homelands of our enemies only leads to unnecessary American deaths.  The sooner America attacks, with overwhelming force, the sooner the battles, and the war, are over and battle deaths are minimized.
Forget "Nation Building!"  It only sucks our treasury dry, weakens our military by turning soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines into diplomats rather than killers. 

Forget "winning the hearts and minds" of the enemy.  As President Richard Nixon is credited with having said:  "Forget winning their hearts and minds.  Get 'em by the testicles and you can take them anywhere you want."  Crude -- but true!

With America's new Secretary of State, John Kerry, dispatched out into the world with what we are told is essentially a mission to "win hearts and minds" on the orders of his boss, Mr. Obama, we're about to see just how childish a diplomatic plan THAT really is.

This a  particularly dangerous time for America as a result of the depthless naivete of our President.  Obama's lack of sophistication and worldliness is readily apparent on the world stage. The first years of his presidency had much of the world "off kilter" when trying to negotiate with the Obama Administration.  Some of their less than sophisticated diplomats came to believe the Obama people were running a "con" on them. They simply could not grasp that an American leader could be that, well, dumb.  So, they concluded Obama's  apparent lack of knowledge about how the REAL world works was all a ruse by the Obama Administration.  Now, however, they know better and they can -- and will -- use  their understanding of Obama's naivete to their advantage and to the advantage of their governments and their militaries.
 

Only an extremely naive person -- a person afflicted with limited understanding -- would adopt a "Lead from Behind" policy for America.  It has been described as a limp-wristed form of isolationism.  Isolationism for America has been disproved at least since the so-called "Spanish-American War" in 1898.  No nation with a global footprint the size of America's can effectively isolate itself from the myriad of nations sharing this same mud ball speeding around the sun.

The plain truth is that as long as America submits to paternalistic collectivism under a paternalistic ruling elite, our brave new masters will most assuredly continue to have America lurching from a catastrophe to a crisis to some other unstable situation of extreme danger for the country and its citizens.   

This is not the America I knew, neither as a boy, nor as a young man.  The America I knew bowed to no one.  We were a great nation. We were a great people.  We feared no man.  We had confidence in ourselves that we could do anything, go anywhere, and be anything we wanted.  Then the cancer of leftist politics took hold. And like the cancer, that it is, it has eaten away America’s soul and her will to live.  It has robbed us of a future as a great, free, people.  With the heavy introduction of Socialism, Marxism, and Communism into out national legislature, the Congress, in the elections of 2006 and 2008, and the election of a socialist President in 2008, any chance of America's survival as the world's lone superpower vanished.  America will do well simply to survive as a free nation.

Under Obama's leadership, we have changed America from a free democratic representative republic into some sort of American socialist monstrosity.  By gutting our military, we will have completed the creation of the paper tiger facade which will, in the end, hide nothing.

Obama's endeavor to create some sort of Americanized version of European style socialism for America will, in the end, prove as deadly to us as it has to all others foolish enough to try it.   Socialism is no respecter of nations.  It will kill its host every time.

For a brief period we will be able to take some solace in the paper "cut-out" of a tiger employed as out national guardian. Until it is tested.  And it WILL be tested.

Then -- what will we do?

© J. D. Longstreet
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Multiculturalism, Diversity, and Political Correctness have Destroyed America ... J. D. Longstret

Multiculturalism, Diversity, and Political Correctness have Destroyed America
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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As I observe more and more frustrated Americans opining how “they/we want our country back,” I also observed that more and more Americans have no clue what we are asking!  THAT was, in itself, and epiphany, of sorts, for this scribe. You see, our young people in America have been denied their lessons in history, especially the history of this country, the United States of America.  And, yes, they ARE doomed to repeat the “mistakes of the past” and, equally as unfortunate, they are doomed to make new and event worse mistakes as a result of their ignorance of our sometimes tortured past as well as our sometimes glorious past. 

I remembered that I had written about this a while ago and decided to look it up. 

As I was reading over my ancient scribbling it occurred to me that not much had changed -- if anything. It also occurred to me that now, right now, as our beloved nation is tearing itself apart trying to find a majority of Americans to either swing America completely over to socialism, which is the first step to national communism, or remain a representative republic, it might be a fairly good idea to re-publish my words of long ago.

So, I brushed off some of the cobwebs and dusted it off, a bit, and I present them now, with some updating for your edification.

First allow me to mention the following:  I find nothing quite so repulsive as those who feel WE are the enemy of America.  “We” being those of us who want our country back.  It is THEY who demonstrate their own blinding ignorance of this country’s sacrifice to gain and maintain the freedoms granted us under the constitution as a representative republic.  It is THEY who are ignorant of the blood sacrifice shed on the alter of freedom to preserve the constitution under which they are allowed the freedom to slander the very America that gave them the freedom they enjoy as a birthright.  It is they who damage our beloved nation once described by one of America’s greatest presidents, Ronald Reagan, as a “Shining City on a Hill.”

Many Americans fell for one of the oldest political “come-ons” in history offered by one of the least qualified candidates for president this nation has ever had the misfortune to have offered it by a political party which has adopted so much of the socialist platform they are almost indistinguishable from those who openly claim their socialist beliefs.  They feel for “C H A N G E .”

Change is not always good. Change for the sake of change is almost always BAD.  And yet that is what put the current occupant of the presidency in the Oval Office as America’s President and the Commander – in-Chief of the US Armed forces.

So – how did we arrive, as a nation, at this pitiable juncture which, I sincerely hope will go down in the future history books as an anomaly?

I think the words below may shed some light on how such a thing can happen to a nation, any nation, even one so blessed by Providence.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --   

There was a time in America, not so long ago, when we had white people, black people, brown people, yellow people, etc.  We had men and women. We had healthy people and we had sick people and we had handicapped people.

We had smart people and we had dumb people.  We had retarded people and we had normal people.

We had queers and homosexuals and but we had no gay and lesbian people.

We had the truth and we had the lie. 

We had people who loved America and people who hated America.  There was no “in-between.”

We had Republicans and Democrats and no Independents.  We had conservatives and liberals.  We did not have moderates.

Well, what happened?  Answer:  World War Two!

What’s World War Two got to do with it, you may ask?  Glad you asked.  It has everything to do with the mess in which we find ourselves in America today. 

Our US troops who fought in Europe, and were stationed there after the war, brought something back from Europe that was, up ‘til that time, alien to America. In those days it was called “Moral Relativism.”  Simply defined it says there are no absolutes. There is no absolutely black and there is no absolutely white.  There is no absolute truth and there is no absolute lie.

Now -- this was like a bombshell going off in America.  Those of religious faith saw it instantly for what it was. The GREAT LIE!

The pointy-head elites, all over the country, especially those of university academia, saw instantly a way to cover all the things they wanted to do and say with the cloak of moral relativism. And they took it up and reveled in it.  They began to teach it to our kids.  Then those kids became elementary and high schoolteachers themselves… and they, too, taught it to our kids and, their kids.

It is not accidental that those on the left side of the political spectrum in America came so quickly to adopt Moral Relativism.  You see… they WERE the university elite.  Someone has said recently, it is now a part of the DNA of the political left and the Democrat Party.

Nowadays, Moral Relativism is known as Political Correctness.  No matter what it is called it is still the most effective way to live a lie and sell that life style to others.

When I was a boy, America was referred to as a great Melting Pot.  People from all over the world would come to America and melt right into the unique American society and culture. Sometimes it took one, or even two, generations to make the cycle complete but they worked at it.  And it made America strong.

Then, the left came up with something called “Multiculturalism.”  Basically, that is to say any and all cultures are as good as ours.  (When we had a unique American Culture. And for those of you too young to remember… we DID have our own culture!) The breakdown of American society, and culture, began at that moment.   The political left began to foist their plan to no longer have a single American culture but a vast array of cultures from all the peoples who had come here to ostensively become Americans. 

It was kind of cute at first, the gay colors of the Hispanic peoples and their holidays… and the October fest of the Germans, and the Irish holidays, and the various other cultural celebrations of the host of other peoples in America.  Then it became sinister. That unique American culture began to be absorbed into the multitude of other cultures.  Now, for all intents and purposes, the American culture is gone. And with it went the identity of the American people.

And then came the icing on the cake:  Diversity.

Ever since there has been the institution of marriage, a man and a woman deciding to live together and create a family… man has needed to get away from the little woman.

You have to understand, men are barbarians.  We can’t help it, that’s the way Nature made us and we will never be house broken.  Even in the pre-Columbian days of the Native Americans on this continent the tribes had their “Man’s House”.  Even then, the men needed to get away.  It’s not that the man loved or respected the woman any the less; he just needed to let the beast out for a while.  He could not, and cannot, do that in a domesticated setting.

For a very long time, the work place served as the man’s retreat.  Then the feminist movement came along and women decided they could have it all… including the heart attacks, ulcers, nervous breakdowns, alcoholism, infidelity to their spouse, and everything that goes with the workplace, and they chose that over their families! The invasion into the man’s retreat was on and it was overwhelming.

The office known as “Personnel” was suddenly changed to “Human Resources” and diversity in the workplace was near complete. But… not quite so in American society. 

The Military was next. Man’s last retreat from curtains and all forms of domesticity was invaded and defeated. Again In the name of diversity.

Now, diversity and multiculturalism feed off each other and they both feed off Political Correctness. How IS that, you may ask?

Well, if we clear the fog of political correctness away for a brief moment, we can clearly see that multiculturalism is bad for the country.  It has robbed us of our identity.  Diversity has robbed us of our homes and families… and robbed us of our places in society.  Male and female have morphed into one sex now. And again, we have lost our gender identity.   Even the forced injection of different races into each other’s cultures, in the name of diversity, has robbed ALL races of their distinct identity. So we came up with hyphenated names to try to identify who we are.  But… it doesn’t work.  Not really.

Why can’t we see this?  Because Political Correctness has laid the cloak of the Big Lie over everything and we dare not question any of it because that would be… you guessed it… Politically Incorrect.

And so… we are lost. We don’t know who we are anymore, we don’t know where we are anymore, and we don’t even know how we got here.

So how can we change it?  We can’t.  You can’t unring a bell. You cannot re-instate virginity.  We’re stuck!

The US has succumbed to that fatal disease which strikes all great nations and brings them their knees.  Guilt.

I mean, heck, we can’t even fight a successful war anymore for fear that we will hurt the enemy. And we feel guilty for, well, something or other. The left will certainly fill in the blank for us.

Certainly we can take a tip from our founders, those 102 frightened, but determined, souls who left their country in search of a new beginning. Like the Pilgrims we are going to have to leave and begin anew.  Where, you may ask?  Antarctica?  Hardly.  I would point in one direction.  Straight up. I firmly  believe our destiny lies out there … among the stars.

Since government can’t afford to fund a colonization program, it will have to be private enterprise, which comes up with the money, the will, and the way.  And do not kid yourselves; my guess is -- they are hard at work on plans for such a venture right now.

In the past 2 decades or so, I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the nearness of our horizons.  We have become fat, lazy, and satisfied.  Our wanderlust is gone.  The curiosity to learn what lies over the next hill has diminished.  And THAT, Dear Reader, is a death sentence to any society. To paraphrase the scriptures “Without a vision, the people perish.”  OUR vision is gone.

Well, that’s not ENTIRELY true.  Some, among us, cling to the vision of spreading our collective wings and soaring into the universe. Some of us believe it is our destiny.  And, as we look around us, some of us believe it is our salvation as well.

© J. D. Longstreet
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Witness to the Decline ... Alan Caruba

Witness to the Decline

By Alan Caruba

 

Listening to Obama deliver his State of the Union speech was painful, considering that he promised that his agenda would “not add a dime to the deficit” while spelling out twenty-nine new programs involving the expansion of government to further extend its tentacles into everyone’s life. And, of course, the only way to pay for this is more taxes.

If one were to try to identify the decline of the American society and system of governance, it would be tempting to say it began with the election of Barack Hussein Obama, but it began much earlier. I am inclined to believe it began in the 1960s when the nation’s educational system was taken over by the teacher’s unions and when education—a word that does not appear in the Constitution—became a federal government department in 1979. The systematic dumbing down and indoctrination of several generations of Americans began in earnest.

One could go back further to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected four times (1933-1945). FDR vastly expanded the federal government, offering many of the same failed programs to “solve” the Great Depression that Obama put forth in his first term. FDR actually prolonged the Depression which ended with the advent of the nation’s entry into World War II. It mobilized America’s manufacturing sector and, after the war ended, was the basis for a booming economy in the 1950s.

Americans, from the days of the pilgrims onward, were always concerned with the moral fiber of their lives and the nation. Despite the nay-sayers, it was and is a Christian nation, though it also offered tolerance to other faiths, incorporating that into the Bill of Rights. The Founding Fathers were classic conservatives, expressing a firm belief in the essential role that religion plays in people’s lives and in society. 

Morality was a concern during the “Roaring Twenties” in the decade that preceded the Great Depression and gave rise to the changing role of women in society. The “flappers”, young women, were a cause for concern for their parents as they took to smoking, drinking in speakeasies, and embracing their sexuality. In 1919 women gained the right to vote. 

The decline of societal norms takes many forms, the latest of which is the approval for women to serve in combat zones alongside men when their traditional role has been to provide support in non-combat functions. The military has been used for societal experimentation and now embraces open service by homosexuals. The integration of both has opened a Pandora’s Box of problems as women service members are vulnerable to rape or become pregnant due to consensual sex. 

Consensual sex is as old as mankind, but handing out condoms in the nation’s schools or permitting underage girls to secure an abortion, often without the knowledge or consent of their parents, only encourages it. The Centers for Disease Control recently reported that half of all new sexually transmitted diseases occur among young people despite years of “sex education” in the nation’s schools. What passes for entertainment, films and television, are rife with the message that there are no limits or consequences to sex outside of marriage.

 


Though a distinct minority, homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals have attacked the central issue of society by insisting on same-sex marriage, a practice that has never existed throughout Western society or any other. In a similar fashion, the Boy Scouts of America, arguably one of the finest organizations for instilling patriotism and many worthy skills, is under pressure to permit gay members and gay leaders. This, too, contributes to the decline of moral standards. A President who now openly advocates same-sex marriage and other measures affecting homosexuals is undermining a central pillar of society.

At one point, Americans in an effort to address widespread alcoholism among the working class accepted Prohibition, lasting from 1920 to 1933, only to discover that a nation cannot change behavior by proscribing it. The Amendment that created it was repealed, but not until it had generated a new class of criminals who understood that Americans would drink, would gamble, and would frequent houses of prostitution, services provided by the likes of Al Capone and his associates. These days the concern is for the widespread use of illegal drugs and in some states the use of marijuana has been decriminalized. 

I am a hybrid between conservatism and libertarianism. It has not escaped my attention that the states happily rake in millions from casinos as well as the sale of booze. If we want people to accept responsibility for their choices then that should include their bad choices as well. A million laws and regulations cannot change human nature.

 

 Even though the Second Amendment ensures that citizens can arm themselves for self-defense and to act as a brake against a tyrannical government efforts to restrict gun ownership and even the purchase of ammunition is yet further evidence of a decline in common sense and an understanding of history in which citizens are vulnerable to a well-armed government. Meanwhile, why the Department of Homeland Security is purchasing millions of rounds of ammunition is a genuine cause for growing concern.

Americans with any common sense know that no amount of law can deter the handful of mentally ill who commit murder. Outlawing gun ownership makes about as much sense as outlawing cars or anything else that causes death. It is also unconstitutional.

The interposition of government between citizens and their personal physicians and the provision of medical services represents the greatest threat to their lives and to the twenty percent of the economy which such services represent. How morally challenged is it for the government to deny medical care based on a patient’s age or condition? That’s what Obamacare will do despite claims to the contrary. How morally challenged is a government that seeks to require religious denominations to abandon their most closely held beliefs?

The failure to reform the “entitlement” programs of the 1930s ignores the changed demographics of a society in which Americans now have an average life expectancy of 78 and who live well beyond that these days. Forty percent of the government’s expenditures are dedicated to these programs before a single dollar is spent on any other domestic and defense programs. That is unsustainable without reforms to these programs.

Lastly, there is the absurd notion that humans have any control over the climate or contribute to natural events such as hurricanes, blizzards, forest fires, and droughts. The criminalization of emissions of carbon dioxide exists only to exert government control over the economy and our lives. It has no basis in science. It is a form of Green tyranny, not much different from Red tyranny.

Many, not all, Americans are experiencing a growing sense of the decline of our society. It is the decline of the nation’s moral standards. It includes the expansion of government in the name of “fairness.” Life is not fair. In the end, your life depends your decisions. The Constitution says you are free to engage in the pursuit of happiness. It does not guarantee happiness.

We are witnessing an expansion of ignorance and of apathy. Those who worry about such things have ample cause.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" and shared on dozens of news and opinion websites. His blog recently passed more than 2 million page views. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. For information on his professional skills, Caruba Editorial Services is the place to go! You can find Alan Caruba on both Facebook and Twitter as well.

 

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